Running for So Long, When Does It Stop?
by caspie
Summary: This is a completely original character in an original story. It's for the D&D game I am playing, which is set in an apocalyptic world that has come about through a vampire take-over...


I was only twenty-six, when my tribe was attacked. It was the middle of the night, when my parents shook me awake and began handing me things. I had no idea what was happening as they piled supplies into my arms. A pack. Some rations. My bow. A bedroll. A heavy cloak. Some extra clothes. As I stuffed everything into the pack, I could see the panic in their eyes and hear the noise in the camp. It sounded like an attack, but I had never seen a battle, I thought it must be a wolf pack or something… But why were my parents so scared, if it were just some beasts trying to snatch their dinner? When my mother ordered me wake Terwyn, my younger brother, I knew something more was happening. As I woke Terwyn, I looked over to see my mother shoving supplies into a second pack. My father was no longer in our tent and I grew more concerned. My brother and I threw on our traveling clothes and grasped the packs my mother shoved at us. She was crying. She was so panicked; I didn't know what to do but what she told me. She started saying something as she pushed us out the back of the tent; I wish I could remember her words, but all I can remember is her fear and her worry as she hurried us out. The only things that I know she told us were to run and that she would always love us. I saw my father's shape in the darkness behind the tent. I saw his silhouette change as he turned and grabbed our shoulders to give us one last push. His hands were so big and so warm despite the cold and I think he said he would miss us… After his shove, we ran. We didn't even know from what we ran, but we ran nonetheless. I heard my father's indistinct shout and knew that whatever was in the camp had reached him. I knew that it would not pass him, until we were away. It was then that I knew fear, so I kept running, no matter how much I wondered why mother and father had pushed us away.

Terwyn and I had been taught some basics of how to hide and hunt and find other people, so that is what we did. I felt responsible because Terwyn was only 19 at the time and I hadn't bothered to discover what my parents were so afraid of; how could I protect him? Somehow we found a group of humans; they seemed like they had been running and hiding even longer than we had been. Actually, they found us. My father would be so ashamed that I had been so terrible at surviving on my own, but I couldn't hunt the way he had taught me and I couldn't try to remember his face teaching me… Terwyn and I had been camping in our poorly constructed shelter, but I awoke sweating and terrified as though it were the night we escaped again; the faceless beasts attacking my tribe lurking just outside. Once I calmed myself, I decided it was still early enough to see some of the stars and that it might ease my mind, but as soon as I looked out of our shelter, I saw the shadows surrounding us. They didn't attack, they just watched and waited, the same as I watched them, until day broke. When the sun shone across my face, the shadows advanced closer and introduced themselves. This was the group of humans that I "found," who had truly found us. A man stepped forward and introduced himself, his name was Isfoel. He looked weary and old, but his hair wasn't grey and he had few lines in his face; it was the eyes, they looked haunted, wisps of the fear I had seen in my mother's eyes lived in his eyes all the time. I called Terwyn out and, for some reason, Isfoel Kyffin took us with his group.

Isfoel became like a father for Terwyn and I. I later learned that Isfoel wore mother's look of fear because he had a daughter, only eight years old, that had been taken by the monsters. But, where Terwyn and I had been saved by our parents, Isfoel's daughter had been taken by the monster that Isfoel's wife had become. He took comfort in raising us and teaching us to survive in this new situation. He taught us what little he knew of the vampires, for that is what had likely attacked our tribe. Terwyn and I bonded with Isfoel more than the others in our group; Isfoel helped me better my skills with the bow and helped Terwyn become a better tracker. We stayed with Isfoel for fifteen years, before we became separated from him, too. The vampires attacked this small group and we split up, as we had planned, in order to save as many people as we could. We were supposed to meet up at a specific location, but Isfoel never showed up.

Terwyn and I placed a memorial for our human father at the meeting point. We would never forget him and we would keep looking for him; the memorial would tell Isfoel that we had survived, if he ever came, and it marked our promise that we would find him, he was alive, and we would kill him, if he had been turned.

We managed to find two of the other members of our group, Rhys and Ceri Beynon. Ceri was pregnant; I still don't know how they managed to escape the vampires, but we were happy to have them and the hope of new life in such a terrible situation. We made our way to a small settlement of refugees, where Ceri gave birth. The boy was named Berwin, blessing. Truly, this little life was a blessing; watching him grow, teaching him ways to survive, and experiencing laughter as only a child can have in such terrible times were immeasurable boons for all of us. Terwyn seemed especially attached, I couldn't help but love Berwin more for that. We were a close family, but eventually we felt the need to move on. I began having the nightmares again, awaking to unknown shadows and I couldn't remain in the settlement any longer. The day we left, I dreamt that Isfoel's face was among the vampires and I could not face that possibility. We invited Rhys, Ceri, and Berwin to come with us and, to my surprise, they said yes. I think we all felt safer together and we were family now, I suppose. Berwin was now, roughly, eight and we moved on anyways, hoping that we wouldn't get him killed.

We managed to stay safe for another seven years. Somehow, we lived, just the five of us, in the wild, like the nomads that Terwyn and I came from, but it wasn't happiness like I vaguely remembered from before the escape. By now, I was fifty-six and Terwyn was fifty, but Rhys and Ceri were getting to be in their mid-thirties and wanted to try to find Haven. We accompanied them to the refugee town, the journey took about a year, as we kept to our precautions and slowly made our way there.

Terwyn and I stayed in Haven for a few months, with Rhys, Ceri, and Berwin, but I think Terwyn knew that I couldn't live in one place and he suggested we leave. I saw the pain in his face at leaving our new family, but my own fear of being found in such a big settlement overpowered everything else. By this point, I could barely camp in the same area for a month, before I needed to leave. So, Terwyn and I left on our own, for the first time since that escape so many years before.

Living with Terwyn was easy. He was a great tracker, a great sneak, and a great comfort. He could hide us, he could find anything that might find us, and he knew that these things made me feel safer. Terwyn had strengthened the skills that he knew would save me. You might think that life would be harder with just the two of us, but we complimented each other perfectly. Our mother and father had started training us young, to be ready for life, no matter what came. I wish that my life had ended up with my parents seeming overprotective and excessive, but I know that we wouldn't have survived after being pushed out the back of that tent without their excess. Terwyn and I had managed to hold onto the bows our father had made for us, repairing them faithfully, so that we would never lose this memory of our parents. Our bows helped us live, just as mother and father had, just as Isfoel had, just as Rhys, Ceri, and Berwin had; our bows were our family, even when there were no other people around.

A long time before this, my magic had manifested. I would awake at night from one of my nightmares and I would hear things clatter and fall to the ground. The sound would pull me back to the present and I was terrified that the vampires had found us, but there was never anything there. I knew that there was nothing following us, so tried to be aware at night, but things only moved when I had fallen asleep and no longer watched. The day I realized that it was me, that my magic was moving things was the day I was almost lost. The vampires had found our camp, while we were with Isfoel, and as I fled, a vampire grabbed my arm. I screamed and lashed out at it in terror. When my hand touched it, it recoiled in pain. My eyes widened. I had hurt the vampire. But, fear took over and I chased after Terwyn before I could think more about it. We made it away and I now new that I had magic. I would have to train it, but I had a way to fight back, even if it was a small one.

Terwyn and I lived alone, traveling most of the time, for ten years. We found other refugees sometimes and would stay with them for a short time, but we never connected like we had with other groups. Near the end of those ten years, we decided to go look for Rhys, Ceri, and Berwin again. As we headed for Haven, we encountered a group of refugees. In this group, we found Berwin, now a grown man. He told us the sad news that his parents had died of a disease, but it hadn't been too painful and they went close together. He introduced us to his wife, Annwyl, and his baby boy, Rhys. We stayed with Berwin, Annwyl, and Rhys for a few years, until the five of us decided to split off on our own. Rhys was only a small child, but we had already begun training him to survive. When we had been with Berwin and his family for ten years, Rhys had turned thirteen and was shaping up to be a fine young man. Terwin and Rhys had a great relationship; it seemed to me that Terwyn loved human children and I loved to see Terwyn happy. The boy learned many of the skills Terwyn taught and did it quite quickly. Rhys clearly had a talent for the very things that Terwyn did.

After those years, we encountered a band of mostly refugee elves. They had been together a much longer time than any group we had known; it was our first time staying with a larger group and a group mostly made of elves. Since our parents sent us away, we had lived with humans or just by ourselves. Terwyn looked eager to live with people of our kind, so I calmed my fears and decided that it would not hurt to stay for a little while. The group was happy enough to have us, with our addition, the group was seventeen. They were impressed by how long we had been running, roughly fifty-one years by this point, and how young we had been, when we went out alone; they were equally impressed with our human friends that had managed to have multiple generations in my life and still seem to be fairly happy as a family.

Terwyn was happy with the elves. I was mostly happy too. We trained with our kind, learned of their tribes, their families, and their homes. There was even an elven family that had managed to escape intact, a mother, father, and twin daughters. We were mostly nomadic elves, so the constant movement was easy enough; it felt almost as I remembered, but with a little more fear and a lot more caution. It was a little weird that we brought a human family, but Berwin had grown up with elves and Terwyn and I had grown up with humans, so blending our cultures was easy enough. Terwyn and I stayed with this elves for thirty-four years. We finally passed 100 years of life with these elves. We had survived for a long time. I couldn't forget my fears though, and that made me an outsider.

Somehow, our band of elves had managed to go unbothered for a long time and that made me more nervous than ever. Maybe it was normal, to live life, to find love, to smile, but I just became more and more nervous that it would be shattered. We had already lost mother and father and the rest of our tribe. We had lost Isfoel, our human father. We still had Berwin, Annwyl, and Rhys, but Berwin and Annwyl were growing old and Rhys had a new family. Rhys had an elf for a partner now, her name was Teleri Gavina of the FrostVein Clan. I was happy that we still had an adopted family like this, but it made my fear even stronger because it meant I had that much more to protect or lose.

No matter how much "family" I had, all I wanted or needed was Terwyn. Terwyn was my best friend and my family. He was the only one that I loved anymore. It was probably an obsession that started as soon as we ran. My strongest old memory of Terwyn is his hand in mine as I pulled him half-asleep from the destruction of our tribe. Now, I could not live without him. I had to protect him. He had to live. I needed him near me. Traveling in such a large group, I feared we were more likely to be attacked. Or, Terwyn may even find someone to care about besides me. I just feared his loss.

Then after so many years of seeming peace, we were attacked. Maybe the group was rusty because the vampires hadn't come near us in so long. Maybe they were just surprised like normal people would be. Maybe it doesn't matter because we were being attacked and all I could think was fear and escape. I couldn't find Terwyn. He must have gone out before I woke up. As always, his pack was on the floor, ready to go, as I always made him keep it, but it was here, in the tent, with me, not with Terwyn. But, I had woken to those sounds I knew so well, not just the nightmare this time; the sounds were real, the watch was shouting the alarm, and I could hear people rushing in their tents. I grabbed my pack, grabbed Terwyn's, threw our bedrolls on top, and left my tent as sneakily as I could. In my panic, I looked about and thanked whatever spirits were watching over me, when I saw Terwyn heading my way. He ran over and grabbed his pack from me and we began running out of the camp. We knew where the meeting point was and we knew that we wanted to survive still.

As I ran beside Terwyn, I could hear steps behind us. The thuds were coming closer. Terwyn and I looked over our shoulders and saw a vampire chasing after us. I told him to run faster, that I would slow a little and try to buy him some time by pulling the vampire's attention away. Terwyn just glared and I realized that I should have had the discussion sooner about what we would do in this situation. I would not let Terwyn be the bait for me to survive, I was older and I would save him, I would protect him just as I had been trying to do since we first left. But, in this moment, it was like we had never left that first escape, like I was making the choice over, except where I could not question my father all those years ago, my brother could question me this time. Terwyn insisted that we split up at the same time and let fate decide who the vampire would chase and I could not argue. As we paused to say our impossibly short farewells, I kissed Terwyn and turned away. He was my brother, my only real family, and possibly the only person I would know how to love, and I was about to separate from him and hope that his life would be saved and maybe we'd meet again.

I turned and ran away from Terwyn. I kept running and running until I knew for certain that no footsteps fell behind me and then I hid. I hid until day broke and then I headed for the meeting point. Terwyn wasn't there. Terwyn wasn't there and I was. I hadn't wanted to admit that if the vampire hadn't followed me, that it must have followed Terwyn… But, Terwyn could still come… The rest of the group that had gathered left the meeting point soon after. We all knew that staying in the area after an attack was a terrible idea. I lived in constant fear of the vampires finding us, but I couldn't leave without Terwyn. I waited for days, hoping that Terwyn had just circled around the really long way. For some reason, I was lucky enough that I wasn't found, but not so lucky that my brother came back to me.

When I finally left the meeting point, I was in a daze. I had failed to save Terwyn. Those words just kept repeating themselves over and over again. At night, the nightmares returned every night, worse than ever. Some nights, Isfoel was a vampire. Some nights, the vampires killed Terwyn. And some nights, worst of all, Terwyn was a vampire come to find me. After a week of the nightmares, I stopped sleeping. I kept walking until I collapsed. I should have died. I should have been found. I wished I would die. The only peace I had was in the black void when I would finally pass out.

I don't really remember much of that time, besides the fact that I had a death wish and that fate wouldn't let me have my wish. Eventually I woke up. I started taking precautions again. I convinced myself that Terwyn would not be caught, turned, or killed so easily. Terwyn will still be out there looking for me, so I need to be looking for him. I knew that the most. He would rather die than be turned, but that doesn't mean he won't become one of those who have been caged and farmed or that he won't be turned against his will. If Terwyn was free, I would find him. If Terwyn was enslaved, I would free him. If Terwyn had been turned, I would kill him. And so, I began to live again.

Once I began living my life again, I knew that I could not truly search for Terwyn in any place that would get me caught. I had to be smart. So I started with the area that the attack happened. It was too late to find any real evidence, but I hoped he might be in the area. I found absolutely nothing. I knew that I would have to find a way to search for Terwyn, so I began looking for people, refugees that may have encountered him, I left the signs we used for those we'd met in the past, I looked for the signs he would have left me, and I did everything else I could think of. I was too weak, but I was determined. But, no matter my determination, I kept failing. I found nothing.

After three years of this failure, I found Berwin, Annwyl, Rhys and Teleri. It may sound awful, but I had thought very little about them in my panic to save Terwyn. I should have been more concerned about them, I should have looked for them too. I was really glad when I met Rhys again, he was fifty-two, then. He smiled as he reintroduced me to Teleri and introduced me, for the first time, to his twins, Terwyn and Tanwen. I was honored and pleased more than I had been in the three years we had been apart put together. I realized that he had thought he had lost me and my brother and he was trying to honor our memory. I don't think those children could have been more beautiful if they tried. Rhys and Teleri hadn't heard any news about Terwyn, but they said they would be happy to help me, in any way they could. I was tired of the fact that I could find nothing related to my brother and I ended up traveling with Rhys's family.

I softened a bit, as I helped raise little Tanwen and Terwyn, though it certainly got confusing when someone called Tanwen and both of us answered. But, no matter how much I loved the children, I couldn't forget my brother. Rhys became my support, acting as a brother to me. He knew the tracking that he had learned so well from Terwyn and how to hide us, just like Terwyn, but most of all, he knew how to comfort me, like the family I needed. Berwin was also a great friend to me and it was a great loss when he died, but at least he died of old age and not the vampires that I so fear. Annwyl followed soon after; it seemed that she couldn't carry on without Berwin, but she died in her sleep and seemed more peaceful than any other death I had seen in my life. After Berwin and Annwyl died, Rhys and I were closer, probably because we had known each other the longest and I had known his parents well. But time passed and I knew that I needed to start searching for Terwyn more.

Thirteen years ago, Terwyn, my brother got separated from me in a vampire attack. I know that he is still out there and that I need to find him. I need to reconnect or free or kill him, depending on what fate found him. In this, I have my adopted family; Rhys is getting older, he is now sixty and Tanwen and Terwyn are twelve. We are hunting for my brother more actively now. I think maybe my obsession is what pushes Teleri away, she worries that I endanger her family, but I would never let anyone of them get hurt before I died trying to save them. I lost everyone else and will not lose this family. A few months ago, we met a group of, mostly, elves and they are willing to let us travel with them. As we go, I search for hints of my brother because I still need an end to this story.


End file.
